“We want tourists that come to enjoy the country and the culture, but not tourists who come for sex.” Hamat Bah, Gambia’s minister of culture and tourism, also stated in a television interview: “If you want a sex destination, you go to Thailand”; a statement for which he later had to apologize
Reminds me of quite a dark joke that made the rounds in Finland some years ago, when a grooming ring run by recently arrived immigrants was discovered in Oulu.
“A sex holiday for the whole family: Dad goes to Thailand, mom goes to Gambia, and the kids go to Oulu”
Thailand has worked really really hard to shed that international image. I feel sorry for them. It’s one of my favourite places in the world. They don’t deserve it, though they may once have.
We’ll be lucky if it goes that smooth. Usually the whole thing at least partially collapses, followed by is a few hundred years of dark age to sort things out and then rebuilding starts with a new system in place for another go.
Hmmm… true… I dunno. I think Cochran really changed his tune when he met the Vulcans and it was supposed to be symbolic of the change humanity would undergo.
But would Musk undergo the same change? Eh, you’re right: I doubt he would be so altruistic under the same circumstances.
Current difficulties caring for elderly will continue to get worse, as the population of working age people continues to shrink faster than the population of elderly
Only bad for nations that are shrinking too fast, like some nordic nations and South Korea. But most other nations will benefit from the less population growth rate.
As a mexican living in Mexico, the struggle is real. What is not real is the OP in bold letters. The so called “specialists” are usually a bunch of so-called activists campaigning in the election against the party in power.
There’s also the magnitude of the election not being accounted for. These elections are the biggest in history. It’s only logical that, assuming the high homicide rate in the country, the absolute numbers will be higher. It really sounds like another article trying to tie our president with the organized crime, something that has been shyly thrown at the average citizen several times now. If there was any evidence of this “blurry” line between government and cartels, the opposition to the President and his party would have already use it, since there’s only one month left for campaigning. Instead, we have a paid bot campaign in X/Twitter, a millionaire one, financed by who knows whose money, trying to portray the president as a cartel boss or something. A failing campaign, if we look at the numbers.
I don’t know enough about the situation to make an informed opinion, but let’s make a hypothetical:
A government regime cannot be complicit in crimes because if they were then an investigation would have found them complicit in crimes?
That sounds insane. That sounds like a crazy person’s opinion. These deaths and kidnappings aren’t natural. Who stands to benefit from all of this? The answer from where I’m standing seems pretty clear.
It’s late so don’t mind me, but I didn’t get your point. They’re killing candidates from all factions, all parties. Perhaps different people are killing independently for different reasons. Mega corporations killing the candidates that want regulations on their use of water, deforestation, etc. Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and others are devastating the lands and I’m sure they’re profiting nicely from that and don’t want to stop. Organized crime. Corrupt politicians. It’s not simple (or clear) to me, why do you say it is?
Again, you’re claiming that these killings are spontaneous and only coincidentally helps the incumbents or the party leadership positions maintain authority. That doesn’t track. This isn’t normal. This doesn’t happen in other places of the world. For this to not somehow be organized or orchestrated would be completely illogical, because then it would be occurring elsewhere as well.
you’re claiming that these killings are spontaneous and only coincidentally helps the incumbents or the party leadership positions maintain authority.
I don’t believe it benefits the party that today is dominant, not only because they are getting killed too but also because they are being accused of making Mexico violent and it is super important for them to prove that things are getting better.
This is not the same as saying that the killings are spontaneous, on the contrary, it is an unstable game of power grabbing because of very special circumstances in Mexico that allow this uncertainty of who is getting what in 2024. This in itself lets us see that there are powerful groups fighting and not a tyranny from the current government nor them only silencing opponents.
This isn’t normal. This doesn’t happen in other places of the world.
I don’t know about normal; it isn’t desirable, but perhaps it was to be expected. Why Mexico and not other countries? I think this is an oversimplification.
First, it does happen in other countries, but differently. Some have coup d’États, revolutions, extremist terrorism, etc. Of course if you compare Mexico to Germany, Germans are playing chess under the table. Compare Mexico to Arab countries, African countries, and even violent Latin American countries. Violence exists in many other places. Yet, secondly, you can only see similarities when comparing social circumstances, never mirrors. You won’t find another Mexico in its details because no other country has Mexico’s history. I repeat: it does happen in other countries, but differently. And that’s why what you said was too simple.
For this to not somehow be organized or orchestrated would be completely illogical, because then it would be occurring elsewhere as well.
Following the last part, no, this can perfectly be complex. ‘Heterogenous’ is the word that is coming to my mind.
To me, it’s more illogical to believe a single force is orchestrating this violence (which, again, is getting people from different groups killed) than to believe it is power grabbing from many sources. The first option even sounds a little conspiracy-theorish or paranoid, if I’m being frank.
I agree on your comment about the current situation. It is very violent. Either it’s getting more reporting than previous years or it actually is as bad as it seems. But I might be misunderstanding the tone of your comment here, it reads very apologetic of the current government to me:
It really sounds like another article trying to tie our president with the organized crime, something that has been shyly thrown at the average citizen several times now.
Maybe because it’s true? As another mexican, I have absolutely no doubt the government is working with cartels in different regions in exchange of more control, both ways. And I’m not saying it happened just in this administration, it’s been happening for at least 20 years.
My take is that some regions where the government wants bigger control are currently controlled by rival cartels where the government currently has bigger control in.
I also find it a bit cynical so write that this fact is being “shyly thrown around”, why are there so many articles about it then? The current president –the face of the government– had been seen multiple times visiting el Chapo’s mom. Very shy of him.
The articles are based on no evidence whatsoever. They cite each other and ultimately cite a dropped DEA investigation from 2006.
I find stupid to call the president a cartel asset, yes, I guess that’s cynical. And I’m cynical because everyone knows the president visits every locality of the country. He won’t skip that place only because a cartel leader grew up there. He didn’t go there to visit the old lady, he did visit the locality. As I said before, that woman is already dead, her son and one of her grandsons are in prison. It’s okay if you take it as proof, that’s you, just don’t try to make it pass as undeniable evidence of the president working for some cartel.
Again, it’s not only the current administration, it’s been happening for decades already. They’re not (all) working for the cartels, but with them. If AMLO (initials of the current prez, for anyone reading) is an asset or not is in anyones judgement, I find it more of a “teamwork kinda thing, but what I find most appalling is his shamelesness of this interaction, hell, he even doubled down on it in one of his morning speeches after media called him out on it.
It’s a fact that local governments are more vulnerable to be corrupted by cartels. It’s been a fact for decades, as we know. We also know now that ex-president Calderon’s federal government was colluded with the Sinaloa Cartel, but we were talking about the president in charge. Maybe his shamelessness comes from the fact that he didn’t do anything wrong and she was not accused of doing anything illegal? After everything you may think you know about her, she was also an old lady probably worried about her son.
Oh, it is a fact that governments are more vulnerable to corruption as there is a power imbalance. Municipal administrations are the more obvious victims of corruption, but some rich powerful municipalities can combat corruption and drug cartels. You can add some other legally condemned names at state-level and the most egregious case of Genaro Garcia Luna. But the case on point was AMLO. I don’t think it’s a problem to talk about a public act if journalists question him, I share his “shamelessness” since he is not hiding and she was not accused of anything, not even publicly accused. She was, as far as we know, the old mother of a drug lord, worried about her son, probably because she wouldn’t see him before her death.
I have absolutely no doubt the government is working with cartels in different regions in exchange of more control
Which government?
PAN controls 20 of the 32 state governments of Mexico and is in deep with the cartel-infested national military.
The current president –the face of the government– had been seen multiple times visiting el Chapo’s mom.
You really need to check your sources. El Pais was taken over by vulture capitalist Joseph Oughourlian nearly a decade ago and has gone the same direction as the WSJ and WaPo after they got bought out by plutocrats.
I’m saying it’s false that they did have dinner. At least, it’s as false as it’s true. I’m not saying that, because she is dead now, then they couldn’t have had dinner while she was alive. In any case, to make such a bold accusation you sure can post some sound evidence. But you can’t, because there is no evidence of that.
I could not find the information about the dinner thing, I could be mistaken about that but this shows he has relations to her/his family. www.bbc.com/…/noticias-america-latina-52100264
Mas alla de que sea cierto lo que decis, me sigue pareciendo una locura pensar en que rapten o asesinen candidatos por una eleccion. Hay alguna tendencia entre las victimas? Son de algun partido en particular?
Sí es una locura. Son cosas que no deberían pasar. En 1994, incluso asesinaron a un candidato presidencial. Siempre se ha asumido que la motivación fue política en ese caso, pero nunca fue realmente resuelto, todo mundo aquí cree que se usó un chivo expiatorio y nadie piensa que el mismo individuo fue autor intelectual.
Pero no es el único caso, en el pasado también se ha asesinado a candidatos, claros favoritos a ser gobernadores de un estado. Los más vulnerables son los candidatos a presidir municipios y existen mecanismos para su protección que a veces no se aplican con suficiente rapidez o fuerza. Las víctimas son de todo el espectro político, a los carteles no les importa la ideología, sólo el poder. Los estados más afectados también son de todo el espectro político, por ahora.
En cuanto a la violencia en general, creo que la gente de fuera de México, que no está tan influida por los medios de comunicación locales y con suficiente educación para leer gráficas, encontrará interesante este estudio de INEGI, que aunque no contiene los datos más recientes, sí son los más precisos sobre homicidios dolosos.
EDIT: Este mes de abril ha sido particularmente violento en México. No teníamos un mes tan violento desde 2022 y espero que no sea el mes que inicie una tendencia al alza de homicidios dolosos.
Es una barbaridad y algo que no debería pasar. No, no existe una tendencia en ese sentido, hay víctimas en todo el espectro político y en estados gobernados por partidos de todas las ideologías. Si lo que te esperas es que el partido en el gobierno tenga menos víctimas por sus supuestos vínculos con el narcotráfico, es completamente al revés: es el partido que hasta hace un par de semanas tenia mas víctimas. También es algo dirigido, pues la tasa de estos homicidios es mucho mayor a la nacional. Existen mecanismos de protección para los candidatos que a veces se activan torpemente o no se activan en absoluto a pesar de ser pedidos, asumo que sí hay casos en los que funcionan esos mecanismos de protección. Casi todas las víctimas son del nivel municipal, que es más vulnerable a la corrupción de los carteles por asimetría de poder.
I have faith in the American voter to put up an all woman P/VP ticket in the form of MTG / Lauren Boebert.
In a highly contested election, they’ll squeak by with a margin of 246 votes in a country run by a sheriff known for smoothering inmates in their sleep, after a federal court rules anyone with a Latino surname is ineligible to cast a ballot. While they technically came out ahead by ten million popular votes, Democrats will conclude that running against the electoral college is a losing issue and will spend the next two years campaigning as the Party That Wants To Protect The Rights of Police to Opt Out of AI Surveillance.
The Dems will run a candidate four years later consisting of a cybernetic hivemind of tech CEOs living in a big vat in a walled compound in New Zealand, on the banner “We’re Not As Out of Touch as We Look”, and will win by a margin of 42.8 votes, after successfully convincing a federal court that the 3/5ths compromise applies to LLCs, LLMs, and LARPs. This hivemind will begin the Mass Liquidation Project, intended to eliminate surplus flesh in the national economy. Any political opposition will be categorized as “anti-democratic” and require the speaker to register as “row 1 liquidation candidates” for the crime of invoking restless spirits of the Unspeakable Cheeto.
Trump will have died of sixteen different medical complications while serving out his second term. But after Elon Musk successfully incorporates his consciousness into the Truth Social app, simulated approximations of Trump posts will continue to appear in all American social media sites until the Great National Blackout of 2053. No records exist following this period, as Americans will have forgotten how to write and read.
My favourite part is when elon uploads trump’s mind to the net but since his technology is shit the instance of trump is in permanent excruciating pain forever
Since its Elon, its just a javascript that says “Hello I am Donald Trump 🤣🤣♥️🖤🚀🚘 Elon Musk is my friend” and “Pussy In Bio ♥️ 🍆 💦 🍑Please Invest in Bitcoin 🪙 🪙 🪙” when you try to interact with it.
There’s something in the contrast between the high percentages of the “best country in the world” people that generally populate the US vs the lived experience of being in America and noticing the myriad ways in which it is decidedly not the fucking best.
That contrast is a killer, and I think adds to the motivation people have to shit on it.
I think I agree with that. Plus, on the Internet you can see all the ways that other countries do things better than your own, without having the experience of living in those countries so you know what they do worse.
Even still, America is the center of global imperialism, which is my primary problem with it even though some parts of the system function fine when viewed in isolation.
The issue is that this place is filled with the exact opposite: people who keep saying that America is some hell on earth. We certainly have plenty of problems and there are no shortage of ways we could improve drastically…but the people who can’t see a post about a historic achievement in Mexico without shitting on America are just as ridiculous as the people who can’t see another country’s success/failure without claiming America is the best. Two sides of the same thoughtless coin.
Not shitting in the US , just some other interesting facts… gay marriage was legalized in mexico first, also abortion rights are stronger in mexico , and weed legalization (federal). I’m a mexican living in the US and like it her (My career it’s in semiconductors and this industry is barely taking off in México). I find it very interesting they are leading in some of these topics/initiatives, despite being a super religious country.
Most of my family wonder why I came here where I could have similar or better life there. There are two sides of Mexico…1) mainly poor and marginalized that come here(with some exeptions like me). And 2) there is a sector of the polloularion that is very well off economically, with standards of living at par with the US and get no benefit coming here.
Just a semi informed comment since i’m not an economist or politician.
Don’t mind me, just another day watching Americans thinking that the poorer country to their south couldn’t possibly be more generally progressive than them ☕☕☕
Mexico also banned slavery before the US did. That’s why Texas split from Mexico, became its own country, then asked the US for help, which the US granted. As their way of saying thanks, Texas applied for Statehood. Then when we started thinking that maybe owning people was wrong, Texas was all “Now, wait a minute! The whole reason we started hanging out with you guys in the first place was because you said owning people was cool!”
We can all agree the population can’t continue to grow. We can also agree it probably needs to shrink, especially by the time this starts making a difference.
However, if it shrinks too rapidly, there’s a lot of potential disruption of society and economy. If it continues to shrink, it could be a serious problem for all of humanity.
We should make changes now to encourage more people to have kids. The goal should be a slow, controlled decrease, to level off, without major disruption
Personally, I like 6B as a good place to plateau. We’re probably already beyond the planet’s carrying capacity so need to be less than today. However a lot of the advancements in society (technology, space, medicine, science, innovation) really require a fairly large population. Establishing a number ought to be someone’s thesis, but in the meantime: 6B
Maybe, but I think of disruption sort of like mutation. We all like to think it creates superhuman but most same actually negative , and reality is we get more improvements with continuous increments
sonally, I like 6B as a good place to plateau. We’re probably already beyond the planet’s carrying capacity so nee
With the current food growing technologies, we can handle 10 billion comfortable well. We will obviously not reach that number anytime soon. But we are on track to shrinking rapidly in many nations. That will destroy these nations.
I think that there are a lot of 8 billion people who would disagree with comfortably well. That number needs to be closer to two, to be sustainable with earth’s resources. At least that’s my understanding, not disappointed if wrong.
Oh absolutely, people gonna keep being people. The truth seems to be that we don’t really know, but it’s likely somewhere between 4 and 16 from the little bit of reading up I just did.
Yeah, I tend to most notice reports of overfishing. Food from land sources is almost entirely farmed but we still get a lot of seafood from wild sources plus don’t have aquaculture anywhere near as advanced as agriculture: there’s not much we can do. Loss of a marine food source is a big deal, and we keep doing that with more species. One solution is fewer people
A lot of the higher estimates assume we can overcome limitations like this with better management of resources, but that is against human nature and our current incentives. It’s not going to happen, even if lives depend on it
I doubt that. Current conventional food production is highly fossil fuel dependant (everything from fertilizer to processing to transport). Earth’s ariable land and top soil is decreasing quickly. Ecosystems are collapsing from the effects of agriculture and climate change. Most “advances” require more inputs and energy, which means more fossil fuel use, further accelerating resource degredation and climate change. I forget the statistic, but humans already control a significant proportion of Earth’s biomass. This chart from greenpeace.org/…/how-much-of-earths-biomass-is-af… might be what I was thinking of:
About 30-40% of food is wasted in the US, in India its 22%, in China 27%. These are the largest nations in the world. The reality is that we can build more efficient infrastructures that can drastically cut down on this. But we don’t need to yet, because it’s not cost efficient. That’s how much ‘free’ resources we have produced based on current technologies.
The basic paradox is that you’re better off with more miserable people who barely want to live than with less people who enjoy their lives a tiny bit more than that.
I ultimately think it’s a load of bunk, but that’s the supposed paradox.
That’s like saying perpetual war isn’t sustainable and you have to make peace. Formally true, but in practice:
Your country (a developed one, with virtually universal literacy, functional school education, water and electricity everywhere, universities, internet, etc) stops growing in population.
Some another country (with basically nothing except for dirt and dirt-poor people who mostly can’t read, sometimes burn witches and kill infidels) doesn’t fscking stop.
The president has had over three years to cure cancer and he has done nothing. I’m planning to write in ‘Cancer’ this November because at least it has a proven track record.
I have no idea about the back story here but being mexican, there racism against indigenous Mexicans, and darker skin mixed Mexicans. Mexicans that are light skinned are seen in a better light by our own people.
That’s not uncommon for non white populations (groups?) I’ve read the same thing about Japanese people, Chinese and Indian people. Darker skin people are subjected to more discrimination than their lighter skinned countrymen.
Had a young adult local Egyptian explain this to me, even with their already colored skin, darker people among their own experienced more racism. Nature is amazing.
For more than 20 years, Clooney has been involved in a number of diverse causes. She works at a prestigious London law firm specializing in human rights called Doughty Street Chambers and is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School in New York. She has been collaborating with Prosecutor Khan for three years, when he asked her to act as special advisor to observe the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region. In addition to creating the foundation that bears their names in 2016, the couple have made numerous donations through it, such as the $1 million they gave in 2017 to fight against racism and hate crimes in the United States, the aid project to provide schooling to 3,000 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon, arms control or hosting an Iraqi refugee fleeing the Islamic State in their own home. The lawyer has also worked on international cases, such as the long border dispute between Vietnam and Cambodia, on the return of Greek sculptures from the British Museum to Greece; and on the recognition of the Armenian genocide.
I don’t know, maybe because she’s fucking busy doing other important shit?
The causes of child prostitution are poverty and corruption in law enforcement. If those aren’t addressed any other measures will just make life worse for the victims.
And Colombian cops are insanely corrupt. Notoriously corrupt. I lived there for a few years, in bogota. There was an area nearby where I lived called “El Bronx,” where everyone knew what it was. A drug and prostitution den, where cops stayed away (i guarantee you that was due to bribes)…until they got off duty and went to score or fuck.
I was dating a Colombian girl who wanted to go down there and see what it was about, but I pushed back. Shortly after I left the country, I saw in the news that the place finally ended up getting raided and they found countless dead bodies and everything else you can imagine.
And in my time in the country, dudes going to a brothel to hang out and drink was…super common. I hated it, but I was dragged to one on multiple occasions without knowing where we were going. One time I was on a bunch of acid and had this dude we were hanging with yapping in my ear all night about what kind of shady shit goes on there, how they kill people who don’t pay, etc. Meanwhile, I’m nips deep in a heavy trip and had literally like $1.50 in my pocket that I didn’t tell anyone about until the morning when I could finally get out of there. I gave it to a cabbie and told him to get us as close to my house as he could.
You’re very right, corruption is rampant and the root cause of issues like this. I paid off cops on numerous occasions. It was literally expected. I literally paid the cops to give my drugs back. Insane. But after they’d shake me down, they’d always say what’s up when they passed. It’s a big, unwieldy problem, unfortunately.
A non-smartphone, that is, a cell phone like the ones that today’s parents had when we were young and with which we made calls and sent text messages, was enough for us, and it did not cause addiction.
That’s not the way I remember it. Texting addiction was a thing. That’s how Twitter became popular; it was basically a way to broadcast SMS to friends at first.
I guess it’s a matter of degrees.
Ad-based services are the real problem here, I think. You don’t hear people complaining about Wikipedia addiction.
Yeah and I remember playing Snake for half a day. And spending all the school breaks bragging with the phones. And once they had color displays, we shared funny 5 second video clips each day. And that was more than 20 years ago.
To be fair, I don’t think we were more addicted than you were ‘addicted’ to Pokemon cards. Extensively watching Peppa pig and Minecraft Lets-plays on daddy’s phone at the age of 3 is a new level, though.
Agreed! That quote shifts the blame onto parents, and completely ignores a decade’s worth of evidence that today’s social media platforms were designed to be as addictive as possible. On purpose. For better “engagement metrics” so that they can get kids’ eyeballs on more ads.
It was? Honestly asking. Texting for me was cumbersone (T9) and .10c each (recieving too!) For my friends and I, texts were a means to an end (meeting up usually), not a place to have conversations.
You’re not wrong about ads though, the main difference today is that many apps are engineered to be addictive.
For teens it almost certainly was. The “no phone policy” of many American high schools was implemented long before the iPhone. And yeah, texts may have been 10c each but that wasn’t your 10c ;)
So, underneath all the dramatic and flowery language, the argument being made seems to be “if the purpose of our biology is to make its own DNA persist, it wouldn’t make sense for biological chimeras to exist; based on the ability of cells to coordinate even with different DNA, the main goal seems to be human cells cooperating to make a general human form.”
This anthropomorphizing of biological building blocks is ridiculous. Cells and DNA are not in competition over who runs the show because they aren’t sapient. And I fully understand that the scientist making this claim understands that on an intellectual level but I mention it because the backbone of this argument is to conflate the literal and the figurative. The only inconsistency in cells being compatible despite having different “bosses” would be an ideological one and, because there isn’t any actual ideology at play, it doesn’t matter whether it’s consistent when attempting to describe it. You’ve proven a metaphor wasn’t literally true, congratulations.
But setting all that aside, this still doesn’t actually function as a counter argument. If we are to accept the premise of DNA’s authority as literal truth, is this function of unrelated cells to be compatible with each other not a logical extension of the DNA’s will? It more benefits the DNA for the organism to be viable even if that means other DNA also persists. It has a greater chance of reproducing itself if it’s not in a corpse.
Not only does the argument hinge on anthropomorphism, it also hinges on this metaphorical entity being self-destructively spiteful.
Lastly, it is downright comical to mention things like “cells know on their own that the heart goes on the left” when making an argument that a different characterization of biology is wrong based on the existence of rare biological edge cases. Some people’s hearts aren’t where hearts normally go. I’d let this kind of thing slide as a simplification of the truth were this not part of calling out exactly the same degree of simplification from someone else as being invalid.
The premise that “if the purpose of our biology is to make its own DNA persist, it wouldn’t make sense for biological chimeras to exist" seems flawed to begin with. Biological chimeras existing still helps perpetuate soneones DNA through offspring doesn’t it?
We estimate that 3.4 billion people experienced some form of neurological health loss in 2021, which is a staggering number. This is largely due to certain conditions that are widespread. For example, tension-type headaches affected about 2 billion people in 2021.
Seems like they goosed their numbers here for a headline. Tension headaches aren’t well understood, but they’re generally not neurological.
The descriptions of blood pressure headaches are inconsistent with tension headaches. Primarily, a headache that worsens with exercise/strain does not align with symptoms of a tension headache, which will remain unchanged. That being said, I am not trying to downplay the legitimate link of headaches in general with blood pressure.
Combination of stress and movement patters, posture etc. that make callisthenics folks and martial artists look at you with sad eyes. The reason exercise doesn’t help in the moment it’s flaring is because you don’t know how to move. Exercise does help, especially anything that’s training fine-grained full body control and awareness but those are skills which have to be developed over longer time-spans. A good physio might be able to alleviate acute symptoms by poking you in the right way but in the end they’re going to give you homework to figure out your own muscles and bones. Likely some general spinal segmentation exercises with some extra you-specific stuff on top. Also, get that stress under control.
tl;dr: psychological / psychosomatic, not neuronal. The nerves are healthy they’re just carrying BS signals. Blood pressure might be correlated because stressed-out persons don’t tend to have chill blood pressure but it’s not the pressure that’s causing the headache, directly or indirectly, because see what Canadian_anarchist said.
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